Mask Museum aims to keep famous faces alive

İZMİR - Anatolia News Agency

The Mask Museum’s workshop instructor Eylel Sürer says it itakes eight to 10 minutes to take the mould of a face and it turns into a mask in 15-20 minutes. She also calls for famous figures to help for their life mask collection , saying, ‘If the artists do not want to come to İzmir, we can go to them.’ AA photos

The İzmir Mask Museum, Turkey’s first mask museum opened by the Konak Municipality, attempts to immortalize the faces of famous figures in masks while they are still alive.

Besides various masks made by artists in different categories, the museum also displays “death masks,” which have been made taking the face molds of people after their death. Among these faces are famous poet Tevfik Fikret and writer Aziz Nesin.

The museum has also developed its “life masks” project following a bitter experience at the workshop working to enrich the number in the “death masks” collection.

İzmir Mask Museum Workshop instructor Eylem Sürer said the previous goal of the workshop was to create masks of famous figures’ faces in order to immortalize them.

She said the same method was used around the world to create masks of dead people, adding that it was not easy to approach the families of dead people.

Sürer said that to widen the death mask collection, they attempted to take a mold of renowned journalist Mehmet Ali Birand, who recently died. “As the museum, we want to immortalize dead people by taking a mold of their face. The day after Birand died, we asked permission from his family, but the grieving family did not give permission. Of course we should understand them. After having this experience, we thought that it would be easier to take molds of living people’s faces. Lots of people may want it. This is why we believe that we won’t have a problem. Our goal is to reach famous people. Then we will make a first by making the collection of “life masks” in our museum.”

She said it was very easy to take the mold of a face. “It takes eight to 10 minutes and it turns into a mask in 15-20 minutes.”

‘Life mask collection’

Sürer said that in the “life mask” collection, they first asked to make masks of all living Yeşilçam (Turkey’s Hollywood) stars.

“We also want to have the mask of renowned names of the music, literary and art worlds. I want to make the mask of the sultan of Turkish cinema, Türkan Şoray, as well as comedian Levent Kırca and musician Erkin Koray. Also, we should take the mold of writer Yaşar Kemal’s face while he is alive. If the artists do not want to come to İzmir, we can go to them.”